VIFF 2018: Dreaming Under Capitalism

Dreaming Under Capitalism

This film will make you appreciate a life free from bureaucracy, difficult bosses and indifferent colleagues. The difficulty of work is still a taboo topic, one that has been pushed underground into our sleeping brains.

What becomes quickly apparent, as one or two dozen people recount their work dreams, is that dreams about work are almost always nightmares. It is not surprising that this large part of our lives, when our time and efforts are commoditized and rarely under our control, is something which provokes subconscious anxiety and fear. In one dream, a therapist has patients literally eating her brain (with very very long thin spoons), in another a man’s workmates becomes zombies, and in a third a man becomes invisible every time he tries to be paid.

The workplaces described in Dreaming Under Capitalism are relentlessly soulless and alienating. So it is fitting that to accompany the descriptions, Belgian filmmaker Sophie Bruneau has filmed locations that are grey and dull, definitely not places one would want to hang out. Even a bustling cafeteria scene suggests prescription and cliques.

If I have a criticism, it is that film is slower than it needs to be. Since it is already languid and thoughtful, perhaps the breaks between dreams did not need to be so long. The visuals are less appealing than the sound so I would have kept the stories moving. I also think it would have liked the introduction of some dramatic element, perhaps overlapping sound or something similar.

I love that this is a film about something we are told is boring (talking about our dreams) and that we should keep to ourselves. Instead, Bruneau has created a thematic piece that is very easy to relate to. Collected together, these work dreams make labouring as employees seem even more sinister than usual. I also appreciate that, at least for now, dreams are one part of life which has not been cracked and decoded. While it is easy to make personal interpretations, we still know little about the process of dreaming, which makes it one place which cannot be colonized by capitalism.